Letters to the people in the life of a person with a surprising secret.

Dear Mother,

Please understand that I didn't want you to fear me. That is, I don't want you to ever start. I need your support, and this is a very hard thing to confess, because I don't know how you're going to react. I fear that your religion or your upbringing will stand between you and me, when all I want is to reach out and tell you who I actually am.

I don't know how well you think you know me. I don't know how my new, true identity will rock your perception of me. Yes, Mother, I know what I might seem like, but I'm not that person inside. I want to be the person to tell you that, before your child leaves, before she's murdered by the strange young man in her place.

Yeah, it sounds weird, I know. I can see your narrow eyebrows contracting in a frown as you read that odd sentence, formulating ideas in your mind as to what, precisely, I mean by that. Elopement? Suicide? What's she on about?

Neither of those, Mother, not to worry. I know we've had our tiffs about certain young men in my life, and I've snuck out to see a few of them behind your back, and you were angry about that, and I'm sorry. I said it at the time but I'm still sorry because I brought it up again and you might still be annoyed with me.

I'm rambling, I know. But this is such a big thing to say, and such a huge part of my identity, what I might end up doing to myself because of it, that I feel you have to know, just so we're all in the clear, just so the secret, in all its enormity, doesn't burst out of my chest at a really awkward time.

I just can't be straight with you at the moment. Perhaps I should go away and come back again, unless you can work out what it is that I'm trying to tell you. I can barely understand myself, what I'm on about, who I am.

No, Mother, I never wanted to kill the perfect little girl you knew before, but she's a lie, a fantasy, she is not me, I am and have always been -

I'll stop short. I can't say it. Not now, not in front of you; you see, I don't dare. Keep your daughter for now, know always that her days are numbered.

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